Tech Tip: Address security systems such as biometrics in your DR plan

Learn how to address security systems such as biometrics in your DR plan.

By Mike Talon

As the need for corporate security becomes
more prevalent on executive management's radar, new security
systems are coming into play in the workplace. From tighter
firewall systems to better authentication, these systems have
become a vital part of corporate information security systems.

As such, you must ensure that your disaster
recovery plan properly addresses these systems. One of the more
interesting systems you may need to address is biometric
identification systems for authentication.

Biometric authentication involves the use of an
individually unique trait to determine who can access a particular
data system. Typically, this trait is a fingerprint or a retinal
scan since readers for these traits are both flexible and readily
available. Other possible traits used in biometrics may
include--but aren't limited to--earlobes, facial characteristics,
signature, and voice recognition systems.

These systems have certain characteristics in
common. Primarily, each requires integration with the client device
(for example, desktops and laptops). Each also generally requires
both hardware and software components to work.

In the corporate arena, these systems tend to
require both client-side and server-side software to allow for
authentication throughout the enterprise. DR systems for these data
systems must take into account each of these components in order to
properly move the systems over to the DR facility when
necessary.

First of all, make sure that desktops and spare
laptops in your DR facility are capable of employing the systems in
question. They must meet the specifications for the hardware and
software components of the biometric systems you use.

In addition, make sure you have the necessary
hardware and software available for installation; either plan to
install it at the time of the disaster, or install and configure it
ahead of time. Failure to have this ready will mean that
biometric-dependent systems will be unavailable to end users until
you put the required hardware and software into place for them to
authenticate.

You must also make sure that any server-side
systems are not only in place, but also preconfigured with the
security and authentication information they need to employ the
client-side systems. This may require making periodic updates of
the security databases or replicating those systems to keep them in
sync.

To keep both sets of data up to date, this
could also mean manually setting up profiles on both the production
and backup systems if the software doesn't allow replication or
backup/restore procedures. Check with the vendor of your security
systems to ensure that whatever method you choose will work
properly. By design, many biometric systems don't easily allow you
to load data sets from another server onto the DR device without
some recovery methodologies.

If you can reproduce the data systems necessary
for the biometric security systems to work, and you've set up the
proper client-side systems ahead of time, your security systems
will move with the employees when a disaster occurs.

But if you miss any of the pieces of the
puzzle, you may find yourself stuck in a situation where all of
your other data systems fail over, but no one can access any of the
data stored securely on those systems.

Mike Talon is an IT consultant and freelance journalist who has worked for both traditional businesses and dot-com startups.